American Cinematographer - January 2009 - 8

Editor’s Note irector Sam Mendes first explored the illusions and delusions of American suburbia in American Beauty (1999), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Achievement in Cinematography (for Conrad L. Hall, ASC). On his latest project, Revolutionary Road, the English filmmaker teamed with Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC to focus a pitiless lens on the crumbling marriage of an outwardly enviable couple (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) in suburban Connecticut in 1955. Based on Richard Yates’ novel, the picture led Mendes and Deakins to spotlight the actors’ performances while avoiding stylistic flourishes in their approach to the period. “I hate the idea that you have to make the photography colorful because it’s the ’50s, or that you have to make it gauzy and sepia because it’s an earlier era — I’ve never seen the point of that, really,” Deakins tells senior editor Rachael K. Bosley (“Close Focus,” page 28). Mendes seconds the motion: “I didn’t want to have any shots that said, ‘The 1950s: weren’t they extraordinary!’ I simply wanted it to be where these characters live.” In an insightful sidebar (“Furnishing a Plain Period Look,” page 36), set decorator Deborah Schutt confirms, “We all wanted to make a period movie that didn’t look like one.” David Fincher and cinematographer Claudio Miranda had to convey the look of eight different decades while turning back the clock on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which stars Brad Pitt as a man who is born in 1918 and ages in reverse. While the film offers plenty of period ambience, Miranda notes, “The intention was to be as naturalistic as possible. Our initial influence for textures and framing was [painter] Andrew Wyeth.” Of course, the filmmakers also had to come up with a way to make their main character age and regress believably, which involved some complex technologies. Miranda and post supervisor Peter Mavromates pull back the curtain in their comments to contributing writer Douglas Bankston (“An Old Soul,” page 42). World War II is the timeframe explored in Defiance, shot by Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC for director Ed Zwick. In telling a true story of Jewish resistance fighters who take refuge in a forest, Serra rebuts the notion that exterior cinematography offers fewer opportunities to be creative. By pushing Kodak’s tungsten-balanced 5279 stock two stops and eschewing an 85 filter, he added grain and contrast to exterior images and created unpredictable changes in the negative’s red, green and blue curves. “The changes are subtle, but they’re there,” Serra explains to Paris-based correspondent Benjamin B (“Brothers in Arms,” page 58). “With film, it’s important to have the three color curves perfectly parallel, and in this picture, they really aren’t.” Bold choices are often rewarding, as ASC member Jack Green quickly learned after he gave up barbering for a life behind the camera. What the world lost in tonsorial technique it has gained in memorable Hollywood moments. Green entered into a long and rewarding collaboration with Clint Eastwood, beginning as a camera operator and eventually advancing to cinematographer on a number of Eastwood’s films, including Bird, Unforgiven and The Bridges of Madison County. His record of excellence has earned him this year’s ASC Lifetime Achievement Award, and Green shares some of his recollections with contributing writer Jon Silberg (“A Cut Above,” page 70). D Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor 8 Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

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American Cinematographer - January 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2009